Just announced via SPD Blotter – Bill Schrier, the West Seattleite who served as the city’s Chief Technology Officer until 2012, is back with the city, at least temporarily, as interim Chief Information Officer for Seattle Police. From the announcement:
As CIO, Schrier will lead the department’s efforts to bolster SPD’s information technology programs and services. He will be a part of the leadership team that will continue to fulfill Mayor Ed Murray and Chief Kathleen O’Toole’s vision that the SPD should be “second to none” when it comes to how the Department uses technology to support its officers and provides for the safety and security of the Seattle community.
As we noted when Schrier left his previous city role, much of the information we report here comes from government data – so these types of roles in particular are vital to increased transparency. We have long asked in particular for more police-report narratives to be made available, and more often – right now, only a tiny percentage of them get published online, and only in a few crime categories, because they generally have to be redacted by hand first, and that is labor-intensive. They’ve been working on ways to automate that process (as well as the much-more-publicized process of making body-cam video available), so we’re hopeful of a breakthrough. Back to today’s announcement: Schrier succeeds Greg Russell, a former Amazon exec, who left the CIO job after less than a year.
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